The actual studio looks nothing like this

All of this, in front of a camera. If you are up for the challenge, please send me through a short video of yourself doing a 1 or 2 minute review of some piece of tech, or cool website, either to my email, newrecruits@danda.com.au, or via private YouTUBE video. I will need your submissions by Wednesday 18th March.

Thanks, and I look forward to meeting my new co-host.

First of all, let me go over some of the changes with you so you know what everyone is on about, this is of course you either aren’t a Facebook user, in which case… GTFO… or you haven’t had your profile migrated yet. I am told by the Facebook Support team, that this is a process that will take over a week to complete. A mean feat unto itself, considering the number of users they have to migrate, which made me think… How much research and development went into this new addition to warrant this change taking place? If you are rolling out something this significant, requiring mammoth project planning and resource management, you would want to make sure the end result is going to be a plus to the end user, in terms of functionality and usability… Right???

Right here we go, the changes are as follows….

•  The brand new ‘Stream’ view: This view shows a concise, consolidated view of what was once displayed in your news feed view in the old UI. Now, instead of seeing a nested
  

  The new-look Facebook UI, complete with 'Stream' and 'Highlights' panes.

   breakdown of your friends’ activity, you see a flat, image enhanced, considerably bloated view of friend information, minus a lot of the information you would normally find in this view. Now for the editorial; While this view is somewhat easier on the eye, it’s by no means more comprehensive, or even as comprehensive as before. I find myself having to deviate a lot from the feed page just to find the information I once had at a finger’s touch. Oh and incidentally, does this now just look like a complete and blatant rip of the entire concept behind twitter? Without the niffy context-sensitive functions? Now to be fair, I have not extensively played with the configurations of this UI yet, so there may be ways of changing this, but it ponders the question… If it can be tweaked to replicate the old view in content, why not implement that to begin with? Food for thought, Facebook UI Development team. A lot of the feed, but my no means all of the content that was once in the feed, is now in the Highlights section.

•  The Highlights section: a view to the right of the stream feed, gives you a breakdown of the updates you would have found the in news feed previously. Information such as profile pic changes, tags, group status, etc. Now when I first saw this, I thought it was a cool concept to separate these items into individual elements, but upon closer inspection, I found this change to be frustrating at best, and downright useless at worst. I sometimes don’t check my Facebook for anywhere up to three days, and when  I come back to it, I liked being able to, grouped by time and friend, easily distinguish the updates that interested me at the time. Now, with the separated, and un-timestamped deployment, find this process to be downright impossible. This was the killer for me personally, and from the feedback I’ve been getting, a gripe of almost everyone that’s used it.
• The ‘What’s on your mind’ change to the status update tool, which in my opinion, was what made Facebook what it is, was a very subtle and cosmetic change in some respects, but with just a change in simple wording, has the potential to change the social dynamic in the Facebook universe. What’s on your mind? Really?? Maybe it should be simply <username> blah blah blah… Now the status updates from users appear to lose that personal touch. I liked having my name there hard-coded. It made you think, “right, the sentence is started.. Here we go..” And, for myself at least, it worked well
• There are a few other changes, including a content filter to sort and display friends and information based on location, and interests etc, and I think this is a valued addition, to be fair, however its siblings still mitigate the benefits of this useful tool.

I was reading an article in news.com.au about this, and I’ve referenced it, that at the time of writing, over 30,000 complaints had been recieved by Facebook regarding this new UI. That has to make the development team take notice… Even though it is early days, and the roll out isn’t even completed, surely a backlash of that extent is worthy of consideration. I predict 100,000-250,000 official complaints to Facebook regarding the new UI within the next 2 weeks, and this begs the question… “Why wasn’t the obvious implemeneted.” Why didn’t the Facebook developers give users the option of trialling the new UI, and if they didn’t like it, let them revert to the old one. There is nothing in the back-end different that would prohibit the two running in parallel that I could distinguish, maybe I am wrong… Surely this would have been an amicable compromise.

I remember when I beta’d the interface I thought to myself, this really is diffeernt. It’s not going to mesh well with veteran users. New users are going to look at it and try to find out what the heck is different between this and Twitter. It’s a clear attempt by Facebook to try and steal some of twitters thunder.. and you know what.. BAAAAHP! Nope. No bingo! It just failed dismally.

The potential for improvement here over the old interface, which.. to be fair was beginning to show its age, was high and they just let everyone down. This, is the Vista of the blogosphere. Give it a few weeks… I am willing to bet that Facebook will provide users the option to go back to the old interface. The backlash will be large, it will be loud, and it will be proliphic. But it will be for the best, as it will push the developers to come up with the Windows 7 of the blogosphere. In the meantime… I wait patiently, and wade through the mess that exists for now.

Peace out.

Screenshot of Google Earth's 3D View of Brisbane

I am recruiting a small army of people to help me do this, so if you’re at all interested, please go to my fan page on Facebook and register your interest. I want at least 100 people doing this, and the more we can gather the better. If this works, it could be the start of a major world-wide event. A true snapshot in time of the entire planet! How amazing would that be? ttfn

The telltale signs of a true Atheist. Be on the lookout

I am a well-settled Atheist, if you didn’t already know, so I see life in a very linear, almost analytical perspective and it leads to dilemmas in my thought processes. Thoughts such as love, desire, passion, hate, fear, loathing etcetera. People believe that love is something that cannot be explained by science; seeing it as a kind of proof that there is more to life than the sum of our experiences. I see love somewhat differently. While I don’t question the narcotic and infectious nature of love, I do question the ’spiritual’ nature that is implied. To quote Stan Marsh, ‘Can’t it be the reason to how and not why?’. He is right. Love is a chemical reaction in your brain, coupled with the synapse response, what you experience as love is very real, and can be explained by science. Does that take away the appeal and so-called ‘magical’ nature of love for me? Not in the slightest. Knowing it’s a chemical reaction doesn’t make me feel less about the person I love. It makes me understand that it’s a real concept.

Back to my point about absolution; as I am currently not ‘in love’ with someone, the experience of life seems somewhat lacking. I have spent a good portion of my twenties in and out of love and the sum total of which has resulted in me being miserable for seven years. This year, it will be all about to change. My focus is on travel, adventure and essentially getting the most out of the short time on this planet, and love at present is a secondary consideration. This is not to say if an amazing woman came along that shared my passion for life, had common interests, and could make me laugh, that I wouldn’t consider a possible relationship. That would be another adventure. But as for love, well I honestly will be trying to avoid it this year. The absolution of love; feeling so locked up in passion and desire that the true nature of life slips by, is an amazing thing, but, I don’t want it to disappear again. The next time I fall in love, will be the last. 

This is what it looks like when you run head-first into rendered concrete.

Of course, this does not take into account the true nature of love… Everything I iterated above is subject to change without notice.

Happy new year everybody. 2009 will be fantastic and I look forward to seeing you all along the way, reading your thoughts and living life to the pinnacle. I hope you enjoy the photo taken of me with a somewhat impressive-looking blunt-force trauma. Before you ask, yes I am fine, and yes, I was a bit of a douche for doing it. This is why you should be careful. ttfn

Useless

I am a happy chappy today. Although the morning started out pretty average, due mostly to my underlying issues which I will delve into in a later post, I managed to cheer myself up by downloading ALL of the XKCD comics. They are all high-quality PNG files, and when I have time I will compile them into a book that I can keep close by when I need a pick-me-up. For those of you that are unawares, XKCD.com is a comic strip written by Randall Munroe, a physics major, from Massachusetts. He worked for NASA in the Langley Research Center doing robotics of all things. He is a very switched on guy, and from what I’ve seen, a very talented artist. His take on the world really makes me think he understands the what average geek is thinking, and the ordeals of day-to-day life. He has a very surreal take on love and romance, which I find I connect with. One of my favourites, ‘Useless‘ depicts him trying to apply mathematical principles to the problem of love. The first time I saw that it really made me think that there are people out there that think like I do; that it’s possible to be romantic while till maintaining your scientific integrity. 

It is the mind of an engineer that tries to rationalise the world in terms of engineering, I am guilty of this, and there is no logical reason not to apply this approach. However, in terms of love, this doesn’t apply. I am already confused by my own ramblings, but one thing is clear, I identify with this cartoon. Randall explores many different aspects of his life, some of which is clearly more fanciful than others. Then

Do Not Erase

there’s just the outright amusing one-liners that he comes out with in his cartoons, the fanciful man in the hat. ‘DNE‘ or Do Not Erase is a classic example of this. It’s funny, because we’ve all been in a situation where we’ve seen something written on the board with the all too familiar DNE written next to it. I don’t now about you but I’ve always been tempted to just make minor alterations to equations, just to see if anyone notices. Of course the tremendous guilt I felt prevented me doing this as I always imagined someone using an altered formula and blowing up a building with it or something. Of course, as in this cartoon, sheer frustration can lead one to just lash out! I love it. 

If you’re at all interested by this style of comic, check out www. xkcd.com and see for yourself. And Randall, if you ever see this, forgive my most likely totally off the mark analysis of your work. Please don’t mock me. ttfn

Yeah okay, it’s a shameless Britney plug, but hey.. She’s redeemed herself. Well she is well on the road to redemption at least. Have you heard her new singles Circus and Womanizer? It’s classic Britney. Sticky raunchy beats coupled with unusually insightful lyrics. She has outdone herself and proved to the world that she is indeed a first-class entertainer. 

I didn’t really intend for this first blog back to be a plug for Britney, when, to be honest, it’s not the music I’m really into at present. My ‘Music and Lyrics’ soundtrack is getting played in my car by a factor of ten at present. Why do you ask? It’s an incredibly romantic movie and actually made me laugh a lot for a Hugh Grant movie. The combination of classic British wit, and sassy American dash made for an all round entertaining movie. What really appealed to me about this movie was the soundtrack. The song that the duo wrote in this movie ‘Way back into love’ is actually a very good piece of music. If you haven’t heard it, you can check it out either by buying it, or just going and doing a quick You Tube search. I could paste a link, but that would be too simple and I like to to see you do a little bit of work for good music.

Right now I am sitting at a desk in an office building that isn’t technically my own. My company has loaned me to another company while the original person they loaned to this company is off enjoying a Christmas vacation with his daughter. Consequently, I am in unfamiliar surroundings, with essentially nothing to do. There is currently 3 people in the office including myself, and my job entails watching a monitor to ensure that the backups run successfully. How much am I being billed out at for this mind-numbing task? Well.. to be honest, I am not entirely sure, but it’s quite a lot. I don’t mind the work. It has its intense moments and does keep me on my toes during peak times. I just find it very boring being here on my own essentially. 

User: I am not receiving my emails. My Blackberry is currently not allowing me to view or send emails while I am on holiday. Can you fix this please?
Me: Uhh… You’re on holidays right?
User: Yes
Me: Why do you even have that thing turned on.
User: Because I need to check my emails.
Me: But you’re on holiday?
User: Yeah, but my work doesn’t stop because I go on holiday
Me: Actually, yes it does. That is the very definition of holiday. Turn it off, and I’ll fix it when you get back from your holiday.

Currently my home life is status-quo, essentially involving copious amounts of DVD viewing, junk food eating, and hours isolated in my room watching Sky News and Face-booking. I swear Face book will be the next addiction epidemic. It is already there. I feel physically unwell if I don’t either have it open on the feeds page, or checked at least ten times a day. That cannot be healthy. Oh well, just another in the list of things I will have to discuss with my counsellor.

Did I mention I am now the proud owner of a 55 inch plasma television? And before you say it, yes I know you are all falling for your LCD televisions, however let me reiterate the reason I bought a plasma television.

• It was $1000, bought second-hand from a woman, that decided to get rid of it from her living room because it was… wait for it… too big! Too BIG? How can a television be TOO BIG? If your television is too big, you build a bigger lounge room.
• Plasma televisions have a higher contrast ratio than LCD’s
• Plasma televisions can reproduce colours closer to black than LCD’s without the washout effect caused by fluorescent tubes
• It’s 55 inches. That was really the only point I needed to raise.

That is my toy currently. And sadly I don’t get to use it nearly as much as I would like. I have been trawling the Internet trying to find  a TV cabinet big enough to either contain this monstrosity, or to sit on top of it. It’s hard to find a cabinet that will sturdily and confidently support 60 kilograms. It looks like I may have to go down to my parents with a VISA card and some time to build a cabinet of my own that will fulfil my needs. 

That will do for now. I will write another blog more regularly as I find it therapeutic. More so than the prospect of weekly counselling sessions at 75 dollars a pop. ttfn

So now, the people of the middle east are in a never-ending struggle to regain their land from Israel, and with an absence of funds, they have resorted to terrorism to meet their goals. So what does a military power like Israel do? Bombs the sh*t out of a neighbouring country. Lebanon! Because this is where the rockets are coming from.

And it’s not that i condone terrorism.. Far from it.. But when you essentially occupy another country, under the rouse of forming a newly independent state, and the masses disagree with it, they’re gonna fight back.

In the words of the well known, Kamahl… “Why are people so unkind?” I dont know what Im trying to say at the moment, but I really dont have a lot of time for Israel as a country. And i know a lot about Lebanon. Beirut was once the jewel of the middle east. One of the nicest, most beautiful cities on the Mediterranean. Now thanks to war and conflict, there’s virtually nothing left.

Seriously. Just stop the fighting and relinquish Israel. All the conflict in the middle-east will come to an end. And STOP MAKING NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST! You dumb leaders over there! Dont you realise if you do anything even remotely nuclear, America is just gonna pummel your ass! Get with the programme! Stop buying uranium, and buy food for your people!

 Ugh the world is run by dumbasses!

If you haven’t played freelancer, you won’t really know how much fun flying though space can be. I think the main appeal of this game to me is that your in a virtually limitless universe and when two people are playing it, buzzing round the galaxy shooting bad guys, stealling stuff and building bigger and better ships, what’s not to love. Mike and I played that for about 4 hours last night, bar a slight detour to the local McDonalds to partake in a Big Mac meal, and a large Strawberry thickshake… I can’t think of a drink I like more than the Strawberry thickshake. I just really hoped they would have fixed those flimsy straws. As you suck the potent liquid through it, it buckles, splits and ends up cutting your lips. Not a nice feeling, but the thickshake is so good, you persevere.

I woke up at 7am, only to receive an SMS from Laura, my friend whom I met at TAFE, saying that this mornings effort of shovelling what later turned out to be 1 1/4 cubic metres of gravel into their gardens was postponed to 11am because Luke, another ‘Tafe Mate’, couldn’t get out of bed that early. It seems these days people are becoming more and more intolerant of mornings. I seriously love them. There’s nothing better than waking up around 7 and watching some early morning television, going outside for a nice walk, or just sitting in the back yard watching the frost disscipate. I left Mikes house around 10:30, and I had to go without breakfast, as of course, noone is up yet. Of course this was expected, as usually noone gets up in that house until around 12pm on weekeneds. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good sleep-in myself, but EVERY WEEKEND?

Well moving on from there, I drove directly to my friend Laura’s house. There was much groundwork to be done. I was most impressed with myself, having arrived without the aid of a GPS Navigation system (which sadly is no more), nor the use of a refidex. If you’ve ever tried to navigate the maze of streets that is Forest Lake, you will know what i’m talking about. It is seriously confusing, and with streets that are marked as both ways, but aparently dont seem wide enough to accomodate two cars.

Rob was the foreman of the day, directing, under Laura’s instructions, everyone else as to where the what we discovered weren’t boulders as we expected but just over a cubic metre of what was essentially gravel. As Luke and Jen, and then subsequently, John arrived, it was clear to me that there were probably too many people there. The wheelbarrows were loaded, moved and emptied so quick, what we anticipated to take all day, took just over an hour.

Shortly thereafter, we desscimated the garden under the front window, and covered it with gravel too. Not before I stuck my shovel through the irrigation pipe, not once, but twice. Its amazing what a little dirt can do to cover evidence. (snicker)

After congratulating ourselves on a job well done, realised the time was 1:30pm and I had to leave in a hurry to get home, get showered and changed, and quickly drive out to my Grandmothers. Too quickly it would seem, I was fortunate enough to have been flashed by a randomly positioned Speed Camera car. In situations like this I would be tempted to verbally bash the Queensland Police for revinue raising, or some other faux pa, but I was clearly in the wrong, 104 in a 90 zone, and well, 1 point and $90 out of pocket, it’s a fair cop. I managed to arrive 20 minutes late, only to find the person I was supposed to be meeting, my obscure aunt, hadn’t arrived yet. She had gotten lost. It turned out she had not been to Brisbane in some 20 years, and was not sure where anything was any more. My father, knowing the streets like the back of his hand, was able to direct her back to my Grandmothers house, and all was good after that. The vacant lot next my grandmothers was advantageous as we discovered it was just the right size to play a little football with my brother.

I’ll take this opportunity to introduce my brother. Jason, is 32, in a defacto relationship with is partner Renee, (really nice girl) and happens to be one of the most renowned chef’s in Australia. (My primary claim to fame). I get to see him usually once a fortnight, either at his house, fixing something, Usually his computer, or at my parents house, for one of our ever-so sporatic gatherings. They are usually a great deal of fun, and this one was no exception. Throwing the footy in the back yard, the spirit of Australianism, then proceeding to towel-whip each other. Now I should point out that there is noone in the world better at towel-whipping than my brother, so it should come as a surprise to you that I am always egging him on by attacking first. Having been subjected to this for many years, i’ve become quite adept at fighting back. This day, was the exception. He kicked my ass, literally. I had forgotten to wet the end of the teatowel, so I was not acheiving the required velocity to cause pain. The battle ensued for many minutes, ending up in a tackle match, which for the first time EVER, I managed to win. I was so proud of myself. It also served as a reminder that we’re all getting older and my brother, who is now 32, is getting older. I was slightly saddened by this, but took solace in the fact that I ended winning the day. Victory is ever so sweet.

Last night, however, is something I choose to block out of my mind. All I can say is, what the hell was I thinking.

I received an email from Mike, my ’so-called’ cousin today asking if I felt like going over his place tonight and play some retro-style computer games. He recently acquired for the sum of $5AU a piece for ‘Serious Sam’ and ‘Worms’. The ORIGINAL games. I remember when I was about 12 or so, sitting in my ’so-called’ uncle’s computer room, in their old house at Chelmer, hammering away at the keyboard and mouse, my 8 year-old cousin sitting beside me, as we try to work our way around the internet for the first time. We decided we would try to find a copy of Worms on this internet thing. 3 hours and $15 later, we came up empty. So to finally have a working copy of Worms to play with, is something that should be very nostalgic and entertaining, if only for this evening.

 I should clarify at this point, the reason I call Mike my ’so-called’ cousin, and Jerry my ’so-called’ uncle, is because in fact, they are no blood relation. Jerry is my godfather, and has known my dad since they were both around 19 or 20, and has been very close to our family ever since. Our families do a lot together. Michael, being my godfathers son, just got called my cousin for convenience, although these days he’s more of a close friend and good mate. Except that, due to his insane ability to be incredibly good at any game he plays, keeps kicking my ass when I do come over to play network games at his house.

 I think I will go. Even if all I end up doing is trying to figure out why Jerry’s new power supply he has put in his computer keeps tripping the circuit breaker.